The very short version: It has now become clear that European governments can no longer rely on American clouds, and that we lack good and comprehensive alternatives. Market forces have failed to deliver a truly European cloud, and businesses won’t naturally buy as yet unproven cloud services, even when adorned with a beautiful European 🇪🇺 flag, so for now nothing will happen.
This means it’s time for industrial policy, which requires politics to be proficient in “industry.
AWS has JVs in China (one for each region, iirc), and China-AWS is a separate partition, with incompatible auth and no cross-partition communication.
Microsoft has separate legal entities running their Azure cloud in certain regions, walking the legal tightrope despite the central portal & auth (edit: it is likely 100% independent in China too)
Most risks (both digital security and political leverage) could be mitigated with sufficient legal requirements. Technical solutions can be developed to fill the gaps.
The EU and its members should continue to support local initiatives, as well as 100% EU-national high-security clouds, staffed by EU/non-US citizens.
That isn’t good enough IMO. Obviously the EU should pass laws immediately requiring complete separation and independence from US counterparts and law, but all code that runs in the data centers should also be open for inspection, including the lowest level firmware.
Enriching big tech is terrible though, especially after they’ve bent the knee to fascism, so the long term goal should be an EU native cloud that has nothing to do with US tech companies.
AWS has JVs in China (one for each region, iirc), and China-AWS is a separate partition, with incompatible auth and no cross-partition communication.
Microsoft has separate legal entities running their Azure cloud in certain regions, walking the legal tightrope despite the central portal & auth (edit: it is likely 100% independent in China too)
Most risks (both digital security and political leverage) could be mitigated with sufficient legal requirements. Technical solutions can be developed to fill the gaps.
The EU and its members should continue to support local initiatives, as well as 100% EU-national high-security clouds, staffed by EU/non-US citizens.
That isn’t good enough IMO. Obviously the EU should pass laws immediately requiring complete separation and independence from US counterparts and law, but all code that runs in the data centers should also be open for inspection, including the lowest level firmware.
Enriching big tech is terrible though, especially after they’ve bent the knee to fascism, so the long term goal should be an EU native cloud that has nothing to do with US tech companies.